The Day Christchurch Cried

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Tuesday 22 February was like any other day. Kids were in school. Parents were at work, and tourists were visiting the many heritage sites within the city. For myself, I decided to head into downtown 15 minutes earlier than usual, for a cheap haircut. I knew I would have to sit in a queue.

I had a few more erins to run, before getting back to my desk at about 12:45pm. Little did I know, that 6 minutes later, at 12:51pm, our beloved city would change forever.

When that time came, my two story building shook like never before. This was not one of the many aftershocks still around from the September 4th quake. This was something new, and very serious.

We dropped under desks, then ran out of the building, everyone safely made it. Sadly, many others in parts of the CBD didn’t.

My partner was in Lyttleton, the port town over the hill from Christchurch. It was also the epicentre of the quake. I know she was there, and had no contact from her till 7pm. I was concerned. She experienced bricks raining down, while a client pulled her into a stand-up steel safe. That was a lucky escape!

Dust filled the air after the quake, and liquefaction oozed up through suddenly visible cracks in the pavement, as water mains and sewer pipes broke below us. The grey sludge was a constant flow and was potentially contaminated with sewage.

Standing outside our building, which still stood, was airy. We were not allowed back in, and most of us had personal belongings in there. I headed home, and walked through one of the main streets on the eastern edge of the city. Walking past blocks of shops that were now piles of bricks. The old 2 storey house that was being rebuild, down like a pile of match sticks. Three cars crushed by the debris.

Streets near home were flooded with grey sludge, as I waded through to get home.

Our place was without power, water and other services for 4 days. We managed the best we could, and coped well.

People in Christchurch have been amazing. The CBD has Search and Rescue experts from countries around the world such as Japan, Israel, UK, Australia, USA, Taiwan, Singapore to name a few. The coordination has ben the best overseas experts have seen ever. We have over 300 police from Australia, many of the armed forces involved, as well as experts and help from all over New Zealand.

Liquefaction has been even more of a problem than the last quake. We have seen a lot more of it. We spent two days clearing it from our street and another property. This toxic sludge is very fine, and as it’s mixed with sewage, needs to be cleared quickly. If left, it hardens like concrete.

Likewise, the fine dust created when it dries is a real health hazard. We will be purchasing masks tomorrow to ensure there are no long term health effects.

As day 5 of the earthquake draws to a close, the international teams of Search and Rescue or USAR as they are referred to (Urban Search & Rescue) continue to do their job. Over 1000 students (The Student Army) have been out and about with shovels helping people clear silt, more than 1800 diggers clearing roads and streets, and local folk helping each other, continue. And will so, for many weeks and months to come.

Much grieving has taken place, and more still to come. We all know people that we are still trying to make contact with. We can only hope for a positive outcome.

Christchurch city is going to take some time to recover and rebuild. It’s always been a great city, and even though it will be a very different city, it’s our home, and we all look forward to the future.

Underage Facebook Users

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Some of us may not realise that Facebook has an age restriction when going through the process of creating a profile.  Part of that process asked for your age.  If the user is under 13 years old, Facebook will not allow the profile to be created.  The minimum age is 13.

Yet this is easily bypassed, by changing the year you were born to another year.   The end result is that Facebook users are joining at a younger age.  Often, parents are the guilty party, as they are creating profiles for the children!

Here are some issues to consider before approving a Facebook profile for a child 12 and under:

1. Age

Facebook requires users to be over 13 years old. Consider how you feel about this and whether you want to condone your children "lying", even if you feel it is acceptable for them to have a Facebook account.

Kids are not surprisingly imitating their older siblings and other older Facebook users and the kind of posts they may write, the surveys they answer and the photos they upload of themselves are sometimes inappropriate for their age. We should understand that it is not "cute". Bragging about having a boyfriend or sharing highly emotional expressions in a public social network pushes them towards dealing with issues they are not ready for and do not need to be exposed to.

2.  Posting Personal Information

Kids reveal a lot about their lives in Facebook  - they do this via Wall posts on their own pages and those of friends, they vote for what they "like", join fan pages, they post videos and photos. A savvy user can easily piece together the multitude of information and make use of it. There is real risk involved in having too much personal information out there.

Kids often compete against one another in the number of ‘friends’ they can accumulate on their profile. In most cases, they don’t personally know these people. Simply telling kids to not "friend" strangers is NOT enough.

3. Privacy

Kids may not be aware of or be concerned about the privacy settings. Facebook made significant changes whereby the default is to expose much of your PERSONAL information to public access.

A lot of information can be identified by browsing ‘friends’ profiles, as well as ‘friends of friends’ profiles.

4. Insults and Bullying

Kids are more likely to be insulting on Facebook. And everyone can see the insult and join in. This is very different than a fight between two children on the playground, where they cannot take it public and conduct surveys to see who is more liked...

5. Increased Computer Use

Facebook may increase overall computer use. Clear rules and limits should be established.

Ultimately, if you do allow your child to have a Facebook account, even if they are underage, you need to keep an eye on their use. The easiest way to do this is to have your own Facebook account and be your child's "friend". This way, you will see everything they write and upload and can even see what their "friends" are up to.

You can also consider installing filtering software  to help you limit time online as well as to filter websites that a child should view.

To learn more about how to keep your child safe on the internet, take a look at our eBook. A downloadable FREE chapter is available here.

Are You Concerned About Formspring.me?

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Formspring is a question and answer-based social website, launched in November 2009. The site allows its users to set up a profile page, from which anyone can ask them questions. The questions and their given responses are then published on the user's profile page.
The questions can be asked with a user's name hidden, or they can be visibly sent from another Formspring account, according to the asker's preference. Users can however choose to disallow anonymous questions, and have the ability to block selected people from asking further questions, even if the asker has remained anonymous. Formspring also allows a user to link their profile with other popular social networking profiles.
It doesn’t take much effort to search Google for ‘formspring users’, before coming across profiles that can be accessed. In many cases, after scrolling down through the questions being asked, it’s not long before questions start to get nasty.
One teacher in the US writes:
Formspring.me is a very simple site. Users like my 8th and 9th graders create accounts, which give them a formspring page. If you or I go visit that user’s page, we see a box to type in with a title that reads “Ask me anything.” You fill out this box and it anonymously asks the user any question you can come up with. The user will then post his/her answer, along with the question, for all to see. Simple concept, right?

Here’s the dilemma: anyone who works with young people can quickly point out that anonymity nearly always breeds irresponsibility. This case is no different. While doing a little research, I was (un)fortunate enough to come across a couple of former students’ pages on Formspring.me and can honestly say that I will never look at those students the same way again. After only a couple of minutes browsing around, here are a couple of things I saw that set of alarm bells in my “teacher brain”:

• Conversations on each page quickly degenerated into some general types of questions/comments:
• “I hate you” comments were remarkably prevalent. I saw people calling each other names that I wouldn’t use around my closest friends. Moreover, the frequency of these comments was staggering. In a lot of ways, this site more or less encourages cyber-bullying, and does it in a public space.
• “You’re awesome” comments are much less disturbing, but encourage a pretty self-centred view on life. For example, I saw a few comments such as, “Why are people judging you? You’re so nice!” Not surprisingly, the students in question respond with statements about how they are good people that don’t judge other people but that other people actually judge them.
• Questions/comments about sex. Every question that can be asked about a person’s sexual history, preference, etc. is being discussed in public for the world to see. Like I said – I’ll never look at some kids the same way again.
• This site allows a space for kids to do discuss these things in an uncontrolled environment without talking about issues with parents or teachers or people who may have a little more experience and wisdom.
• Think MySpace encouraged risky behaviour? Looking at two pages on Formspring, I saw full names, cities, and cell phone numbers posted for all the world to see. At our school, we try to teach kids what information to put out there and to be responsible citizens of the internet. Apparently our lessons aren’t sticking.

Now, I’m not saying we should sue the website and get it shut down or anything like that. I’m not even necessarily saying the site should be blocked by school web filters. What I am saying, though, is that this is just another site that parents and teachers need to be aware of and, hopefully, talk to their students about using responsibly. I know I will.

The comments from this teacher would be similar to others.  In New Zealand, there has been a significant increase in the use of this site, as its awareness increases.  Parents are encouraged to talk to their children about the site, and discuss the dangers it poses.

Do you have some experience using Formspring.me? Do your children or students use it? I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts, comments, and questions on this one.

Google Safe Search for Kids

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In case you haven't noticed, search-engine giant Google has made some changes to their interface. How does this relate to Google Safesearch? Well, if you search for anything you'll notice a drop-down link to the right of the search button. This drop-down link doesn't appear on the Google homepage, you have to be on the page that displays your search results.
Clicking this link will give you the three filter options: off, moderate, and strict.

Keep in mind, this filter can easily be changed by children if you haven't locked your Safesearch settings (see below for instructions).
This information is an an update on this topic as there are serious differences in the search results if you haven't locked this on your home computer. You won't see a huge difference by changing the filter from "moderate" to "off" in the Web results, but do the same in Image results and you'll be shocked at what comes up.
For example, a harmless search like "teens on cell phone" on a moderate filter is exactly that, harmless. But simply change the filter to off and you won't believe what comes up. I didn't believe what came up. Parents should take immediate action on their home computer.
If you've ever felt that porn was a threat to your child's online safety, then take Google Safesearch seriously. Continue reading below to learn how to lock it.

In addition to being safe on social networks, we can't forget that the Internet is full of malicious websites.  Google.com is the most popular search engine in the world and is used by millions of people every day, most likely including you and your children.  Without the proper filtering, searching in Google's image or video database can yield some scary results, and it's important for parents to know how to shield their children from those results.  Fortunately, Google has provided multiple ways to safely filter your child's search results.
Setting and Locking Google Safe Search -
1. Head over to www.google.com, and in the top right corner you'll see a link called "Search Settings".  Click it.
2.  You should now be at the Preference page.  From here you can set the type of filtering that you want.  Choosing "Strict filtering" is the only way to activate Google Safe Search.
3.  Now all you have to do is lock Safe Search. To do that, just click on the link called "Lock SafeSearch".  From here you'll be prompted to log into your Google account (if you don't have one, making one only takes a second).  Then you can lock it.


NB: Article reproduced from http://internet-safety.yoursphere.com/